Green & Blacks search for a Taste Assistant

Have you heard? Green and Blacks have launched a nationwide search to find a brand new Taste Assistant! The lucky candidate will work along Head of Taste, Micah Carr-Hill and will be responsible for developing new flavour combinations for the brand. Sound good? You’ll get to travel the world to source the very best ingredients and devise new products. Is this your idea of a dream job? Then what are you waiting for, enter now!

The job won’t come easy though, Micah is looking for the person that has the ultimate taste buds as well as smell. He’s looking for someone that fully understands the difference between taste and flavour – to enter simply head to www.pieceofgreenandblacks.co.uk. Closing date for entries is 16th December 2010. The successful candidate is expected to take up their role early 2011.

I am a self confessed chocoholic. I can’t go a day without eating at least a teeny bite of the delicious brown stuff. Green & Blacks Creamy Milk is my bar of choice so imagine my delight when I found that Green & Blacks were hosting a bloggers event to coincide with the search for the Taste Assistant.

The event was held at the lovely Miele Gallery in Central London and there were three competitions to take part in on the evening. My boyfriend and I took part in the 15:15 challenge. What is this I hear you cry? We had £15 to spend on ingredients to create any dish that we liked but here’s the catch – we only had 15 minutes to cook it from scratch! There were 9 contestants in total and each person created something incredible in the allocated time. The dishes were judged on the taste element (obvioulsly) and Micah wanted to see great flavour combinations that exploded your taste buds when hitting the mouth. I went for a Lemon and Lime Cheesecake with an Oreo Biscuit Base

and Jack opted for Pan fried Scallops wrapped in Pancetta with Pesto and Capers.

Each contestant had their own cooking station with a helper from the Miele Gallery. It was a little nerve wracking because the guests that weren’t cooking were watching intently!

During the cook off, guests could enter the other two competitions of the evening, both to test the taste buds of course! The first was the ganache test – you had to taste two ganaches and write down as many ingredients as you could decipher. The second test was tasting the flavours that were present in two cocktails.

I have to admit, I realised that my sense of taste isn’t the greatest. I had difficulty figuring out what tastes were present in either. I got a couple right but that’s not nearly enough if I wanted to apply for the role of Taste Assistant. I was too busy cooking and watching others cook to enter the ganache test and by the time I realised, the answers were alreay been looked at! I definitely don’t think I would have come top anyway!

The dishes from the 15:15 challenge were all lined up and Micah, armed with a fork, set out to try each dish. He gave nothing away as he slowly tasted each dish and moved onto the next. Each contestant stood grinning as he took a mouthful of their creation.

After much deliberation, the winner was announced. Drum roll please…….. MiMi!!! She made a fantastic Japanese dish using linguine with fish roe and wild mushrooms. The flavours were great – I really can’t remember exactly what was in it but it was delicious!

A round of applause was followed by tears of joy and a quick photoshoot. Doesn’t she look so happy!

Two more dishes were highly commended – Jennifer’s mille feuille and the rather scrumptious looking piece of beef, which according to Micah was just a little bit too spicy. YUM!

The best looking for me though was the fantastic Partridge garnished with Rose petals.

I had an absolutely fantastic evening and got to walk away with a gift – a Green & Blacks box containing 15 (yes, 15) different bars of Green & Blacks, a bottle of wine, a USB stick and my very own taste test kit. I was happy as larry walking out of there.

I may not be up to the challenge of Taste Assistant but if you feel like you’ve got what it takes, don’t delay, enter now. You’ll be the envy of millions!!!